Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

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rubberduck
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Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by rubberduck »

yesterday i saw two "dirty" words in unit names.

the first was a drake named Gaush*tt
(from Gaushii + Verditt ???)
you also can find the word in names.cfg: Vash*tt

the second was a drarf named An*lus
(Anaithas+ Alalus???)
or directly from names.cfg: An*llos, An*lol, An*lsil, An*lus

and i found an elvish name An*lia

words like these should not be in unit names

(one exception: a*s (* = s), because gryphons often have this word in their name, for example K*ssshh)
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Iris
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by Iris »

What I get from this is that fictional languages and names aren’t allowed to have infrequent substring overlaps with English in particular.

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Tonepoet
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by Tonepoet »

This isn't so much a flaw with the game's random name generator as it is with an alphabetic language, as short words are often contained within larger ones and it'd impractically limit our ability to construct a natural vocabulary if we'd had to avoid specific character combinations. It's also a relatively trivial one at that, since inappropriate words tend to be those with extremely disrespectful or sexual connotations in their definition, rather than the form or pronunciation they take. That's why I can feel comfortable divulging strategies involving the Orcish Assassin without censoring the second word, even though I'd usually be reluctant to call somebody by a specific synonym for posterior/donkey redundantly contained therein. That is to say in this instance, the word Assassin refers to a stealthy, professional killer, rather than a lusted after body part or serving as a comparative insult to a human's degree of reasoning.

I suppose it could be argued that the game should be prohibited from making short names, as the worst words tend to be spelt in their entirety in approximately four letters though.
Htonsew Rof Elttab Eht is just too cool for school. I've got no words to describe it. Have any of you guys tried it? ;-)
AI
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by AI »

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johndh
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by johndh »

This is just silly. If you're offended by words that contain letters of other words but share none of their meaning, it might be a good idea to rethink your priorities. This game is primarily about killing people, but this is what bothers you instead? Wesnoth has no need to censor itself to avoid offending people with no reason to be offended, and neither does any other work of entertainment.
Tonepoet wrote:This isn't so much a flaw with the game's random name generator as it is with an alphabetic language
In my opinion, the problem is overreaction to something that is entirely a non issue.
It's spelled "definitely", not "definately". "Defiantly" is a different word entirely.
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iceiceice
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by iceiceice »

johndh wrote:This game is primarily about killing people, but this is what bothers you instead?
Yes wesnoth is a game about killing people, but by and large we try to keep it classy. The question is whether this unit names issue actually impinges on this.
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Crow_T
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by Crow_T »

AI that link is so funny- that is added to my list of links to post on discussion threads. BTW can I change my username to Scunthorpe? :lol2:
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Turuk
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by Turuk »

Crow_T wrote:BTW can I change my username to Scunthorpe? :lol2:
It could certainly be arranged...
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Dugi
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by Dugi »

Thinking about rubberduck's post:
There is a NO of names that contain all kinds of swearwords and the only entity that has problems with it are dumb unthinking programs. If offices were like these programs, Joe Cocker would have been banned from performing, woodstock '69 where he performed would have been banned from mentioning not only because he performed there and rock music would have evolved differently. If rubberduck thinks he's an overzealous word filter program, he should think about himself a bit.
TheCripple
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by TheCripple »

rubberduck wrote:the first was a drake named Gaush*tt
(from Gaushii + Verditt ???)
you also can find the word in names.cfg: Vash*tt

the second was a drarf named An*lus
(Anaithas+ Alalus???)
or directly from names.cfg: An*llos, An*lol, An*lsil, An*lus
You're finding 4 letter strings, these get repeated plenty in English. The second one is particularly egregious - 'an' and 'al' are both really common, and come up together frequently. For instance: Analog, Analgesic, Analogy, Banal, Canal, Analyze, a whole class of chemical compounds (methanal, ethanal, propanal, tert-butanal). Trying to purge it is completely ridiculous, and that you even parsed it and thought it relevant says more about you than the name generator. Your first example is marginally stronger, in that it is at least restricted to things like names - Shitake mushrooms being the obvious case here.

You'd have a case if, for example, polysyllabic racial slurs somehow managed to show up in names. That's the sort of thing that is a) much less likely to come up by accident, and b) actually worth objecting to.
Deki
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by Deki »

When you try to regulate things that are offensive to someone you are doing Sizif work. At the moment in Croatia there is rather strong movement of some catholic Christian organization that are trying to remove Darwin/evolution/sexuality from school books because for them they are offensive. Similar organizations are trying to forbid use of Cyrillic script because it too is offensive to some people. Regulation of offensive word can easy enough one day go to the stage we are seeing in Croatia and "lets ban science movement", "lets forbid the use of language" or "lets forbid a book". In the end we will ban everything.
Stabs
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by Stabs »

sedmi_patuljak wrote:When you try to regulate things that are offensive to someone you are doing Sizif work. At the moment in Croatia there is rather strong movement of some catholic Christian organization that are trying to remove Darwin/evolution/sexuality from school books because for them they are offensive. Similar organizations are trying to forbid use of Cyrillic script because it too is offensive to some people. Regulation of offensive word can easy enough one day go to the stage we are seeing in Croatia and "lets ban science movement", "lets forbid the use of language" or "lets forbid a book". In the end we will ban everything.
And then Fahrenheit 411 becomes real!

Off-topic, though, I thought the OP was sharing it because it sounded interesting; otherwise, he'd have went to bugs or development to say that we needed a filter to keep asinine names out of the generator.

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Iris
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Re: Dirty Words like "sh*t" in unit names

Post by Iris »

I think we have reached a consensus here, and this topic can now rest in peace.

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